which the same roots form the common basis of all the ancient and modern dialects which compose the group, we analyse these roots, we shall find the sense evade us. Take, for instance, the Indo-European roots, which hardly exceed five hundred in number. Each one bears several very different meanings, which are referred somewhat arbitrarily to a vague and general signification. Many among them differ from the others only by the probable fusion of another root, since atrophied, which seems to have been used to define the sense. Take away this adventitious aid, and the number is reduced to a few dozen, whose meaning is as doubtful as the form is simple and crude.

It remains to be discovered, if possible, why this or that instinctive utterance, vowel or consonantal, has characterised or evoked such and such an image, sensation, or relation between thought and action. May we hope to discover the germ of articulate and definite speech in interjection, in emotional language, in onomatopoeia, or the imitation of certain sounds? How should given sounds, to which a definite meaning was attached, have become fixed in the memory of a horde or clan, and communicated by degrees to the tribes which neighbourhood or interest brought into relations with it?

CHAPTER II.

EMBRYOLOGY OF LANGUAGE.

The cry, the first element of language-The cry of animals: expressive of emotion, the forerunner of the verb, and the name of a state or an action; the call, germ of the demonstrative roots-The human cry variety of intonation, stress, reduplication-Onomatopoeia— Traces of direct onomatopoeia-Approximative, symbolical, or generic onomatopoeia-Onomatopoeic theories of Plato, Leibnitz, De Brosses, and of Court de Gébelin-Onomatopoeia defended by Whitney, rejected by Paul Regnaud-Metaphor, founded on mistaken analogies, has vitiated language from its very birth.

In order to establish the descent of man, the naturalist seeks to discover the living or extinct forms which may have served as transitions between the classes, orders, and species. In spite of numerous breaks in the chain, he can nevertheless follow out the processes of selection and heredity, can trace the gradually increasing complication of organs and functions, the slow co-ordination of the members round a spinal cord protected by an envelope, which becomes ossified into vertebræ, until finally the nerve substance and its diverse energies are concentrated in a cerebral ganglion, where impressions derived from without are translated into ideas and movements.

It is by similar methods that the philologist follows up language from the modern analytical phase to the inflected state, and so to the agglutinative and monosyllabic; and in all probability we have here a complete cycle, a series of which the various stages are each occupied by one or more groups of idioms,

retarded or hastened in their onward progress, either by known facts of history, isolation, migration, intermixture, or by some ethnical and national aptitude or inferiority, which may be enduring or ephemeral.

Yet this classification does not carry us far back into the past. Moreover, the four great categories which, taken together, comprehend all languages do not imply kindred among those idioms ranged in any one class. Vocabulary, and not grammar or syntax, marks original relationship; and the vocabularies— the inheritance of entirely distinct families-cannot be referred to a single common origin, because they are the result of different vocal and mental aptitudes. No dramatic incident like that of the legend of Babel dispersed the nations and languages. Each linguistic

stem germinated apart, and grew up alone in its own sphere; each family must be studied separately; and in each we are completely ignorant of the changes. which took place prior to the historic period.

Must we then admit with M. Michel Bréal that the origin, not of language, but of the meaning of words, lies beyond our ken? But even he, who, with all his discretion, is so bold, has not abandoned the quest which he declares to be vain; and from Plato down to Schleicher, Whitney, Steinthal, Noiré, Paul Regnaud, and a hundred others, whose opinions we shall have to discuss, this central problem has exercised the minds of men.

When experience and induction by their mutual aid had at length succeeded in tracing the genealogical tree of mankind, a fortunate discovery was made by anthropology. In embryology the student found an abridgment, a summary, of the transformations discovered or assumed from age to age. By the

aid of the microscope, fœtal life reveals to the eye all the phases in the development of the cell, of the egg, of the very simple material aggregate which is destined to be clothed with the dignity of humanitythat is to say, to realise within a few months the work of a thousand centuries. Now it seems that language also has in some sort its embryology. Not that we can ever be the spectators of the formation of a language; but we possess the germ nevertheless, the undoubted embryo of speech-the Cry, which in most of the higher animals, even in man himself, exists as an independent utterance, and suffices for the expression of certain sentiments, and even of a few ideas, and is consequently the first element of the crudest forms of speech. From the moment that we reject supernatural intervention and regard language as the work of time, it is not possible to seek its point of departure and its germ elsewhere than in the resonance of the air against the vocal chords, and in the emission of this resonance by the mouth and nostril. The production of the voice is at first as unconscious, as reflex as any other bodily movement. The cry, in the lower species and in the infancy of the higher, is invariable, like the wail of a new-born infant. The toad, for instance, has but one note; that of the cuckoo and of a number of wild animals is hardly richer. Yet, since it responds to some impression or to some need, the sound already has a meaning, since it attracts or drives away creatures whose interest it is either to flee from or to approach the utterer of the sound. This meaning, very vague, or rather very elastic, grows more exact with the sensation of which the sound is the result; the single note of the toad implies already an affirmative or imperative

proposition, embodying the sexual desire, or something similar. Repetition, continuance, the raising or lowering of the tone, mark the earliest efforts to attain. to the expression of more varied and more distinctly realised sensation. Modulations, more or less uncertain, more or less fixed by practice, as consciousness dawns, come to increase the vocal resources. A given vocabulary will include five, six, or even ten variations of the specific cry, each one doubled by a stronger or weaker form, and susceptible of expressive combinations, comparable to our derivatives and compound words; the language thus reflects, so to speak, the shades of joy or pain, fear or desire, sickness or health, hunger or thirst, changes of temperature, the approach of day or night. Lucretius in his fourth book translates with a rare felicity all these utterances of birds, cows, dogs, and horses, in which are clearly represented those sensations and affections which are. common to us and to most animals.

In animals the specific utterance is but the immediate expression of a present emotion. This observation is fairly just, and insisted on by those who would accentuate the line of demarcation between men and brutes. It is more to our purpose to find some modification of a formula which is too absolute as it stands. For does not the language of the brutes at times pass the limits assigned to it? Evoked by an immediate sensation, does it not sometimes correspond to some enduring recollection, even to a prevision which may be realised?

We are not sufficiently acquainted with the vocabulary of the anthropoids to interpret the nocturnal choruses of certain apes; but we cannot doubt that the dog, which so readily distinguishes its friends.